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Rajneesh is a great leader and a good man who was never really understood in our own country. In India he was a philosophy professor whose real name was Mohan Chandra. Rajneesh was a nickname he acquired in his childhood. He began lecturing in 1957 at colleges and universities. In 1971, he changed his name to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

You tell your Governor, your attorney general and all the bigoted pigs outside that if one person on Rancho Rajneesh is harmed I will have 15 of their heads, and I mean it. You have given me no choice. Even though I am a nonviolent person I will do that.

September 18, 1984 press reports, quoted in — Congressman James H. Weaver (February 28, 1985). "The Town That Was Poisoned". Congressional Record (United States House of Representatives).

By the year 2000, Oregon will be collapsed and the city of Rajneesh Puram will be existing.

In order for the Moral Majority and the mobs to understand Rajneesh, they will have to leave their mob mentality and their morality and become amoral. Right now they are living in the 16th century; it is about time that they grow up and move with the science. And become sophisticated as Rajneesh are.

Although it was somewhat scandalous that CBS 60 Minutes aired an interview 3 November 1985 in which Sheela said this, it was not coined by her as some believe. The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (2006) dates the phrase to 1934,[1] but it may be found as early as 1921.[2]

Charismatic communications from Bhagwan or his designated surrogate, Sheela, were grandiose and served as motivation, direction, and inspiration for the group. Bhagwan's and Sheela's rhetorics posed problems for the movement in their very expansiveness and arrogance toward other groups and institutions. While the attacks on other cultures attracted followers dissatisfied with governments and institutions, they also alarmed and alienated more conventional audiences.

Once the Rajneeshees moved beyond Rancho Rajneesh and began to publicly challenge the status quo's discursive formation, their radical vision direcly threatened the existing order. Ma Anand Sheela's polarizing rhetoric took the values and definitions of the establishment and subverted them, gaining a public voice for the Rajneesh cause.

All evidence suggested that Sheela and her small circle were responsible for these dangerous activities, but whether or not Rajneesh knew remains in dispute. However, for the past twenty years, Sheela has sworn that Rajneesh directed every criminal and violent move.